Monday, January 20, 2014

During my last China trip to Guangzhou, I observed 2 things which I thought China did quite well in their national education.

1) Annie sometimes brought me to travel on the mrt. The crowd in Guangzhou mrt is most probably worse than that In Singapore. On 1 mrt ride, where it's pretty crowded, I saw people trying to squeeze onto the train. They will be calling out to people inside to squeeze in more so that there's space for them to come in, and people in the grain generally comply. And they they can't squeeze any more, they'll say it out loud, and the person trying to come in will stop trying.

I can imagine a similar situation in Sg. where we won't call out to people in the train to squeeze, we'll just try to push our way in. And when it's too tight to squeeze, we probably won't tay it out loud. We'll be cursing under our breadth at the person, or shout at the person rudely.

China seems more civil than us for this. Of course, this could be my experience alone.

2) Annie brought me to KTV with her friends. One of them selected a few national songs. I can't imagine any of my friends choosing such songs. And if someone really did so, that person will be looked at with dread. But Annie and her friends just join in to sing the song happily.

You can call that brainwashing or you can call that National Education. Every country will have it's share of it. Patriotism needs to be cultivated / brain washed into the citizen. A sense of patriotism makes a citizen have a stake in the country, which will result in him working harder and happier.

Of cos, patriotism cultivation can be overdone too, and we want to avoid that as well. Examples are Germany under Hitler or Japan during WWII.